Eating Cheerios Off the Floor

A Whole New World

2009-11-04T23:04:00.010-06:00

August, September, and October have all flown past and we're suddenly into November already, so I guess it's finally time to update our blog. ;)

Andrew is now almost 3 months old already and he's very cute! For those of you who live far away and may not have heard our news yet...these last three months have been a huge roller coaster for us. Experiencing a newborn was new for us (since Aaron was almost a year old when we brought him home), but the newborn part seems like just a small piece these days. We've learned over the last three months that God has a special plan for Andrew. When Andrew was just under two months old he was diagnosed with profound hearing loss in both ears. This means he is essentially completely deaf.

Andrew was born this way - Nebraska has newborn hearing screening tests that they perform within the first ~24 hours or so of being born (which he didn't pass). Subsequent re-tests of a newborn typically show that it was just fluid or gunk built up in the ears that clears up on its own and everybody goes on with life as usual, but not in Andrew's case. Nothing got better in his case and after repeated tests we got a better understanding of his hearing. The tests they perform are really pretty interesting, and yes, they really can tell whether or not a newborn can hear things and it's not just clapping by their ears. ;) They perform a couple different tests, but the most interesting is one known as the ABR. They hook up some electrodes to measure brain stem responses and, while the newborn is asleep, the play specific sounds at various volumes through a small speaker inserted into his ear. Since the baby is asleep the brain activity is very quiet, so you can easily tell when there is a brain response to a sound (which is something that happens even while you're asleep). So far they've measured his hearing loss at volumes of 100db, which means he can't hear a jack hammer that's 3ft away from him.

We don't know the medical reason, and may never know, but we do know that God has a plan for this. This news was very hard news for us, of course, and we cried. Often. But even in this we can see how God is easing the burden before we even fully understand what we're facing. We've learned that Nebraska provides great services for the hearing impaired, and our local school district is already bending over backwards to ensure that we have all the help we could possibly ask for. One of the best places in the country for diagnosing and treating hearing loss is the Boys Town National Research Hospital, which is right here in town. They offer a preschool for the deaf among numerous other programs. Our local school district has a great early childhood program and has already partnered with specialists from Boys Town to form a full team(!) of people that come to our house regularly to help train us on how we can communicate with Andrew. But even more important than all of these great resources has been the help of our families and friends. They have all been so incredibly supportive - providing encouragement, food, laundry, babysitting - you name it! I don't know how we would have made it without all of their help (which is still continuing today..)

Communication is one of our biggest fears. What parent wouldn't be scared of not being able to talk to their baby? We had done a little sign language with Aaron just for the fun of it before he was able to talk (using things like Signing Time DVD's), but had never learned sign language seriously. We've since dug into learning signing as much as time allows (which isn't much!). We're starting with learning ASL (American Sign Language) as that will be the easiest way to start communicating with a baby. Our families have also taken up learning sign language already and I think many of them have long-since surpassed us in how many signs they know. :) We're also pursuing something known as Cochlear Implants. This is a special device that gets implanted in your head, and then a special transmittter unit (that looks kind of like a hearing aid but with circles attached to the back of your head) will send signals inside to a receiver which stimulates the nerves. This approximates sound and can allow children to actually achieve pretty reasonable hearing and talking. Here is a blog that we were referred to and found encouraging of someone else here in Nebraska (Lincoln) that got Cochlear implants - it's really pretty amazing stuff! Over the next year we'll be going through a battery of tests to evaluate whether Andrew is a candidate for the implant (it can only fix certain types of hearing loss), but he won't be able to receive the implants until he is almost a year old.

While we wait to learn more about the implants, the required "first steps" are to try out traditional hearing aids anyway. This coming Monday (11/9/09) we are going in to get Andrew's first set of hearing aids. They know this won't fix his hearing - at most it might give him an awareness of "environmental" sounds. Maybe then he'll be able to hear that jack hammer 3ft away. ;)

Anyway, enough about that! Here are some recent pictures of life during the roller coaster! :) Andrew and Aaron are both really cute. Aaron is a great big brother and just loves to take care of his "baby".

We went to Vala's Pumpkin Patch this year as one of our annual fall traditions and had a great time! You should see all of the pictures! Andrew slept the whole day.

And here are some from Halloween. Aaron was a fireman and Andrew was a dragon (we think). :)

Some Better Pictures...

2009-08-22T15:14:00.006-05:00

Things are slowly starting to settle down here... Andrew's schedule is usually pretty consistent with waking/feeding every 3 hours or so. That holds pretty true until you actually WANT it to be consistent (e.g. to sleep yourself), at which point he'll break his routine and want to stay awake for hours. :) We've been blessed by lots of friends from our church bringing dinner every day this week and that has helped a lot.

We took Andrew in for his first Dr. appointment this last Monday (at 5 days old) and he had put on another 3 ounces and a half-inch from his size at birth. At this rate I think we'll have a football player as a teenager. ;)

Aaron is doing very well and loves his little brother a lot. He loves to hold Andrew on his lap (with help) and gives him frequent pats and kisses (very cute).

For those of you that have been asking... Here are a few of the better pictures we've taken over the last week or so. You can see a slideshow of them here.

Andrew update

2009-08-14T10:24:00.000-05:00

(Sorry for the short messages - I'm typing this on my blackberry phone so its kinda hard)

Andrew is now 36 hours old and he's already changed! He spent most of the first night and day just wanting to sleep - we had to wake him up to feed him! He's been very calm and quiet the so far. Thursday afternoon he started showing more spunk and would get instantly upset if his bottle wasn't available instantly. ;) Once he gets the bottle he's happy as a clam for another couple hours, so hopefully it stays this way when we get home!

Sara is doing well, though really really tired of course. It's hard to get much sleep when you're in the hospital.. They're letting us go home today (friday) and we can't wait to be there!

-Chip

Andrew is here!

2009-08-12T18:02:00.000-05:00

We'll have to post more later, but he's here! Sara did a great job and it was thankfully relatively easy. Andrew is pretty calm so far!

20 inches, 8lbs 3oz

-Chip

We're going in!

2009-08-12T06:46:00.000-05:00

Today is the day we're being induced, so we're heading to the hospital in a few minutes (it's 7am here). We're praying for a relatively straightforward delivery and hopefully we'll have some news late today!!
-Chip

Nothing Yet...

2009-07-29T06:54:00.004-05:00

Just a quick word to say that, no, Andrew still hasn't come home yet. Sara's body is definitely ready to be done being pregnant though! :)

Here's a recent picture:

From Pregnancy

We're all looking forward to bringing Andrew home!

Preganancy Update

2009-07-04T07:22:00.008-05:00

For those living out of town, here's a quick update:

Sara's looking really cute! ;)

We're now 34.5 weeks along, and if you ask me, I think he's going to come early! I'm telling Sara it'll be in the next week or so, but she's still thinking it'll be closer to our due date (August 11th). By the way, did we tell you the baby's name? He will be "Andrew Charles". I think we'll stick with Andrew instead of Andy or Drew.. I also updated the Pregnancy Slideshow if you want to see Sara's progression. :)

Sara's been doing very well (though she gets tired of course), and we still manage to get out for the occasional family fun day. Here is a slideshow from the last month or so, including a little trip to the Amazing Pizza Machine where Aaron was being very brave (for him) and rode the carousel and train all by himself.

It's a BOY!

2009-04-16T23:19:00.005-05:00

Yep, skip right to the chase - it's a BOY! We're really excited about Aaron having a brother to play with. We've been so excited about this little guy, but haven't been able to do much to get ready for him because I (Chip) have had to put in a lot of extra time at work for a special project, but now that is done so we're able to get on with life again!

I thought it was about time we got some pictures of Sara (and the new baby BOY) posted! For those of you that live far away and haven't gotten to see Sara recently, she looks really cute pregnant!! You can click the slideshow below to see the pictures larger, or this link should show it full screen.

Sara has really been doing amazingly well with this whole pregnancy thing if you ask me. Of course she gets tired some, but she sure is working hard and it's really exciting to see her tummy growing and hear all about how the baby is kicking (I can't wait till I can feel it, too).

We've also decided what we're going to do for the baby's room.. My office is moving to the basement, and Aaron will get a "big boy room" decorated in his favorite - Disney Cars (Lightning McQueen, etc.). He's really really super excited about his room and he keeps trying to kick me out of my office so he can have his new bedroom. :) I don't think we'll be redecorating Aaron's old room very much, it's a much cuter baby-boy room than we'll be able to create again at this point in life. ;)

Just for the fun of it.. We got to spend some time with Sara's family recently and did the whole Easter Egg Hunt thing for Aaron and his cousin, Luke. It was a lot of fun! Aaron loves to run and find an egg, but once he finds it, he has to stop and open it and examine the contents thoroughly (and try to close the egg again) before going onto the next egg. Of course this meant he didn't get a whole lot of eggs at the larger church easter egg hunts, etc., but he didn't seem to mind. ;)

(full screen version, click here)

Some Recent Pics

2009-02-19T07:50:00.004-06:00

It's been a while, so here are some recent pictures from so far in 2009! Aaron has grown up sooo much!

(if you can't see the slideshow above, you can also see it here)

We're Pregnant!

2009-02-15T15:57:00.008-06:00

Yep, you read that right!

We were extremely surprised when God gave us an unexpected piece of news right before Christmas - we were pregnant! We had a real hard time even believing the pregnancy test at first, but a few days after taking the test they scheduled us for an ultrasound:

We found out from the ultrasound that we were 7 weeks along, with a projected due date of August 11th! It's hard to see from the picture, but you can actually discern a little body in there complete with little limbs and a head! We can't wait for our next ultrasound (around 20 weeks) where we should be able to tell the gender, too!

We were "just a little" excited when we got the news :) so we only waited a couple days (till Christmas) to tell our families and then finally started sharing the news with friends a few weeks later. Life has been absolutely crazy (of course), and it only got crazier once we got the news and Sara's body began needing a whole bunch more sleep!

Speaking of Sara's body...it's starting to show already! It looks super cute if you ask me! :)

(Sara at ~14 weeks)

It's been amazing to see how God puts families together and how he orchestrates the timing of everything! As you probably know, we've been in the process of adopting again (from S. Korea this time) since about Feb 2008. We contacted our adoption agency (Holt) and they put our adoption process "on hold" until we contact them again to either cancel it or begin pursuing it again. We're very glad for that - it wouldn't be right for either baby if they both came home at once, there's no way you could give them the attention they really need.

We're crazy excited and looking forward to a brand new adventure (again)! Please pray for us and for this new little baby!

Eating Green Beans

2008-10-14T21:29:00.003-05:00

Ok, so we haven't posted any updates in forever, and way too much has happened to summarize right now, but I just wanted to share a video clip that I thought was really funny.

You have to understand that Aaron really doesn't like to eat green beans (or food in general for that matter)...

This continued for quite a while (lots of green beans) - Sara is a very creative mommy!!

To My Wife

2008-07-14T07:15:00.005-05:00

Happy Anniversary!!

We've been married 7 years as of today, and each one has been a great year! For those of you who don't know Sara personally, she is a very kind and compassionate woman who strives after God's heart.

She is also really, really, really cute. :)

One of the things that always surprises me is how creative she can be! This year for Father's Day she arranged to have some Daddy pictures put into the adoption newsletter our old agency puts out, and she also secretly arranged for some family pictures, which turned out really well:

She is always coming up with fun new places to go with Aaron (which always makes me depressed when I have to go to work and miss out on that day's activities), but she saves the really good places for when I can go, too. She is truly a blessing to me and brings so much joy and spice to my life! I LOVE YOU!

Adoption Update

2008-06-19T22:06:00.003-05:00

We got two pieces of good news today!

First, we got our fingerprint appointment back from Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS), which is actually an important step in getting our visa paperwork completed (for our 2nd adoption). Our appointment is on July 14th - our 7-year wedding anniversary!

Our second piece of good news is that we now have our official court date to finalize Aaron's adoption in Nebraska. Technically, Aaron's adoption was final back in Vietnam, but here in Nebraska we actually have to re-adopt him again so the state will issue him a Nebraska birth certificate, etc. Our court date is now set for July 29th. This is when we can officially change his name from his Vietnamese to his American name! By Nebraska law, we had to be home for six months (and complete our 6-month post-placement homestudy visit) before we could file for this re-adoption. By the time we got everything done and to the lawyer......, well, it's been ten months now. :)

That's it for now!

Our Summer so Far

2008-06-07T22:47:00.007-05:00

Wow, it's been an exciting summer around here!

There is so much to say that I'm really not sure where to start. Hopefully we'll be able to blog about each of these in more detail later, but for now I think we'll have to let the pictures do the talking!

Here's a quick summary of our summer so far!

April 19 - Our first "Family Vacation Day". We decided to set aside one day a month to do some around-town activities making memories just as a family (no other friends, etc.). We went to the Strategic Air Command (SAC) museum because Aaron loves planes, and then went to Henry Doorly Zoo so that Aaron could ride his very first "Choo-choo train" (he loves trains, too!).

Click here to the full-size slideshow of our Family Vacation Day #1.

May 3 - Our big trip to Estes Park, Colorado, which you already saw in our last post.

May 10 - Family Vacation Day #2 - We explored Fontanelle Forest where Aaron got to run up and down the boardwalk while looking at wild turkeys, etc. Then we went to nearby Lincoln, NE to visit their Children's museum. That museum has about everything possible a kid could get excited about (trucks/motorcyces/balloons, pretend houses/stores, space shuttles, water toys, tunnels, and more).

Click here to see the full-size slideshow of Family Vacation Day #2.

May 23 - Our very first camping trip! Ok, so we were a little nuts... We had a great plan to go camping with all of Chip's family (that live around here) over Memorial Day weekend to Indian Cave State Park. Unfortunately, Chip's brother and his family had to cancel out for most of the weekend when some stuff came up at the last minute, so it was just Chip's parents and us. We actually had a ton of fun, but we managed to pick the rainiest weekend of the year (we neglected to check the weather forecast). There was crazy rain, thunder/lightning, 60+Mph winds, etc. Oh yeah, and we were camping in a tent, not a camper. The tent leaked a little bit (somehow it always dripped right on top of Aaron!). We also had raccoons break into the food tent and try to steal food every night (and make a general mess of things in the process). But, we had the campground completely to ourselves for a couple days and Aaron had a blast exploring the outdoor world. He loved the tent, and we got some great memories. We ended up only staying for 3 days (out of 5) because the weather forecast started calling for possible hail and tornadoes. :) All in all, it was a lot of fun, and very tiring! Thanks G'ma & G'pa for all of your hard work!

Here's the full-size slideshow of our First Camping Trip.

May 25 - Sprinkler Fun! Since we came back early from camping, we had some extra time around the house. We pulled out a gift someone gave Aaron last fall - an "Octopus Sprinkler". It was Aaron's first time in a sprinkler, and after a little close scrutiny he loved playing in it! A couple days later a friend came over to play in it (and share popsicles). A couple weeks later G'pa and G'ma Shadbolt took him to a park in Fremont, NE that has (free) outdoor water sprinklers, fountains, etc. and he had a lot of fun there, too. He LOVES water! :)

Click here to see the full-size slideshow of Aaron's Sprinkler Fun!

Whew! Well, that at least covers the summer up through last week! I think Aaron absolutely loves the summer (and so do mom and dad) - there's just so much fun stuff to do!

Colorado Fun

2008-05-14T20:41:00.005-05:00

Two weeks ago we went on our first "real vacation" with Aaron! We joined some friends of ours, two other couples (each with one baby), and made a quick road-trip out to Estes Park, Colorado. We're all from eastern Nebraska, which means this would be a ~8 hour road-trip under normal circumstances. As part of our parent initiation, we had the bright idea of trying to drive through the night so that the babies would sleep the whole way there.....yeah, right. All that really meant was that no one slept well that night so the whole first day was spent recovering and nap schedules were kind of messed up for Aaron the whole trip! :)

Nonetheless, we had a lot of fun and learned a lot about how to travel with Aaron. Sara did a great job of packing all sorts of fun new toys for Aaron, including small cars, motorcycles, helicopters, books, and more (she went garage-sale shopping that week), so that really helped. Aaron actually handled the road-trip very well (we drove during the day on the way back), and we all decided that made a lot more sense!

Anyway, enough ramblings, here are some fun pictures from our trip. Of the kids, Aaron was the oldest (at 20 months), then Naomi at 15 months and Natalie was 7 months. You can click the play button to see the slideshow below, or you can view the full-screen version.

It was kind of cold there - it snowed the day we arrived and finally warmed up again the day we left! :) The guys still went hiking, though, and it was a lot of fun.

Some of the other cool things on this trip: Aaron has learned how to smile upon request, loves pine cones, and says the word "Elk" because we saw so many of them on this trip (it comes out sounding more like "ihl").

As always, vacations are always over too soon!

Adoption Update

2008-05-14T20:35:00.002-05:00

Well, we finished our home study and we were officially approved a couple weeks ago! With S. Korea adoptions, our homestudy document (which is now done) is essentially all the paperwork there is to do. Our homestudy has been sent to the Holt headquarters in Oregon, where it will be sent on to Korea so that we can be matched with our child! It's hard to believe things are moving this fast! Of course, this part of the wait (waiting for your referral) will probably be a good 10-12 months still. Once we receive the referral it'll probably be another 4-6 months before travel.

We still haven't picked out any boy or girl names yet - good thing we have something to keep us occupied while we wait! :)

Starting our Homestudy!

2008-04-16T21:31:00.004-05:00

Our second adoption just seems to be going so fast for us! We sent Holt our initial application on Sunday, January 27th and heard that we were given approval to begin the process on Tuesday, January 29th. We were surprised to get a call only two days later!

It took us until March 24th to complete all of the homestudy paperwork. (This is mostly all of the paperwork required to adopt from Korea since there is no dossier process for this program.) The paperwork included questions about our respective childhoods and our parenting styles, physicals, an FBI background check, sex offender check, birth certificates, etc. Sara's parents had to watch Aaron one Friday night into Saturday morning for us to get enough time to complete everything. Thanks, Mom and Dad!!

We completed our first 4 classes of Adoptive Parent Training on April 4th and 5th. It was fun to meet so many other couples who were adopting from Korea through Holt. It was an interesting class because the students all had so much experience with adoption related issues. Our class included students who were adoptees themselves, 2 couples (including us) who had adopted previously, a couple in which the husband had adopted siblings, and a woman who grew up in India who married an American man (She was able to provide some insight into living in a new culture). All of us could have practically hosted the class ourselves once we combined all of our unique experiences!!! We were able to attend this class because Chip's parents watched Aaron while we attended. Thanks, Mom and Dad!!

Tomorrow we officially begin our homestudy. We will most likely have two homestudy meetings, one this Thursday and one the following Thursday. It amazes me to think that we are already this far along in the process! I told Chip tonight that I wanted to begin thinking about decorating another nursery!! Yea!

We are so blessed that God chose us to be parents through adoption. It was His plan for us all along and we feel amazed to see what joy and fulfillment it brings to our lives. God chose Aaron as a perfect fit for our family and we can't wait to see who the new addition will be!

I would guess we may get a referral another year from now or so. We'll keep you all updated as we know more!

Salsa

2008-03-27T22:38:00.004-05:00

Just had to share a funny picture... We went out for Mexican this week, and discovered that Aaron loves salsa! He will dip the chip in the salsa, suck the salsa off the chip and then re-use the same chip to go after more salsa!

Our Announcement!

2008-03-22T21:46:00.008-05:00

Well there's been a lot of stuff happening around here the last several months. I know we haven't been very good about blogging, but hopefully that'll get better sometime!

But real quick, we wanted to share some exciting news with everyone... We've decided to start our second adoption process! We are in the midst of filling out the paperwork to adopt a baby boy or girl from South Korea. We sent in our first application form back at the end of January, but we're just now getting most of the paperwork going (it's a lot harder to find time to fill out paperwork these days!). We thought and prayed a lot about this, especially about which country to adopt from. We loved our experience adopting Aaron from Vietnam and he has been such a blessing to our lives. However, the U.S. and Vietnam aren't getting along right now (as far as international adoptions are concerned) and the whole situation is very unstable (and slow). In contrast, South Korea is a very stable program (and South Korea doesn't require us to compile a dossier - so there's a LOT less paperwork!).

One of the hard things about making that decision was that we have to use a different adoption agency (we loved using CHI), but this time we're using Holt. Thankfully, Holt has an office right here in town, so it does make our process a lot easier. We don't know much yet, only that our baby could be a boy or girl, typically 8-12 months old or so. We probably won't get a referral (picture) until January or February of 2009, and be able to bring him/her home around July/August of 2009. Aaron will be about 3 years old by the time he/she comes home, so there will be about two years age difference between them.

Oh yes, Happy Easter! Here are a few pictures of Aaron recently with some Easter presents from his grandparents. Hopefully we'll get a few more cute pictures tomorrow. :)

His t-shirt says "When God made me, he was just showing off". :)

Here's a quick slideshow of some pictures from this month (click on it to see the full size pictures)

Welcome to our New Blog!

2008-03-22T21:41:00.004-05:00

Hi Everybody!

I hope you're able to find our new blog easily enough. Our old blog location had a yearly fee, so we decided to expand the scope (beyond just Aaron) and make a more permanent Needham Family Blog. We're pretty excited about some of the fun features of this blog (notice the picture gallery on your right and the family video section below!).

If you want to catch up on old news, our old blog is still at its old location, but I'm not sure how much longer they'll keep it up. Maybe we'll get ambitious and try to transfer the posts to this blog just for history's sake. :)